see each other! I cannot walk across the park
alone."

"Uncle Reg will bring you."

"Not often, I fear. Uncle Reg has enough to do with his office."

"You can come in a cab."

"Cabs cost money, Ayey dear."

"But Uncle Thomas--"

"We had better understand one or two things, Ayala. Uncle Thomas will
pay everything for you, and as he is very rich things will come as
they are wanted. There will be cabs, and if not cabs, carriages.
Uncle Reg must pay for me, and he is very very kind to do so. But
as he is not rich, there will be no carriages, and not a great many
cabs. It is best to understand it all."

"But they will send for you."

"That's as they please. I don't think they will very often. I would
not for the world put you against Uncle Thomas, but I have a feeling
that I shall never get on with him. But you will never separate
yourself from me, Ayala!"

"Separate myself!"

"You will not--not be my sister because you will be one of these rich
ones?"

"Oh, I wish,--I wish that I were to be the poor one. I'm sure I
should like it best. I never cared about being rich. Oh, Lucy, can't
we make them change?"

"No, Ayey, my own, we can't make them change. And if we could, we
wouldn't. It is altogether best that you should be a rich Tringle and
that I should be a poor Dosett."

"I will always be a Dormer," said Ayala, proudly.

"And I will always be so too, my pet. But you should be a bright
Dormer among the Tringles, and I will be a dull Dormer among the
Dosetts. I shall begrudge nothing, if only we can see each other."

So the two girls were parted, the elder being taken away to Kingsbury
Crescent and the latter remaining with her rich relations at Queen's
Gate. Ayala had not probably realized the great difference of their
future positions. To her the attractions of wealth and the privations
of comparative poverty had not made themselves as yet palpably plain.
They do not become so manifest to those to whom the wealth falls,--at
any rate, not in early life,--as to the opposite party. If the other
lot had fallen to Ayala she might have felt it more keenly.

Lucy felt it keenly enough. Without any longing after the
magnificence of the Tringle mansion she knew how great was the fall
from her father's well-assorted luxuries and prettinesses down to the
plain walls, tables, and chairs of her Uncle Dosett's house. Her aunt
did not subscribe to Mudie's. The old piano had not been tuned for
the last ten years. Th